“Only the one to the ECT room at five to call Dr. Baguley.”
“Are you quite sure you didn’t telephone Miss Bolam?”
“Enid? Oh, no! There wouldn’t be any reason to call Enid. She … that is, we, didn’t see very much of each other in the clinic. I am responsible to Sister Ambrose, you see, and Enid wasn’t concerned with the nursing staff.”
“But you saw quite a lot of her outside the clinic?”
“Oh, no! I didn’t mean that. I went to her flat once or twice, to collect the cheque at Christmas and in the summer, but it isn’t easy for me to leave Mummy. Besides, Enid had her own life to live. And then she’s quite a lot older than me. I didn’t really know her very well.”
Her voice broke and Dalgliesh saw that she was crying. Fumbling under her apron for the pocket in her nurse’s dress, she sobbed: “It’s so dreadful! Poor Enid! Putting that fetish on her body as if he was making fun of her, making it look as if she was nursing a baby!”
Dalgliesh hadn’t realized that she had seen the body and said so.
“Oh, I didn’t! Dr. Etherege and Sister wouldn’t let me go in to her. But we were all told what had happened.”
Miss Bolam had indeed looked as if she were nursing a baby. But he was surprised that someone who hadn’t seen the body should say so. The medical director must have given a graphic description of the scene.
Suddenly Nurse Bolam found her handkerchief and drew it out of her pocket. With it came a pair of thin surgical gloves.
They fell at Dalgliesh’s feet. Picking them up he asked: “I didn’t realize that you used surgical gloves here.”
Nurse Bolam seemed unsurprised by his interest. Checking her sobs with surprising control she replied: “We don’t use them very often but we keep a few pairs. The whole Group’s gone over to disposable gloves now but there are a few of the old kind about. That’s one of them. We use them for odd cleaning jobs.”
“Thank you,” said Dalgliesh. “I’ll keep this pair if I may. And I don’t think I need worry you any more at present.”
With a murmured word which could have been “thank you,” Nurse Bolam almost backed out of the room.
The minutes dragged heavily to the clinic staff waiting in the front consulting room to be interviewed. Fredrica Saxon had fetched some papers from her room on the third floor and was scoring an intelligence test. There had been some discussion about whether she ought to go upstairs alone, but Miss Saxon had stated firmly that she didn’t intend to sit there wasting time and biting her nails until the police chose to see her, that she hadn’t the murderer hidden upstairs, nor was she proposing to destroy incriminating evidence and that she had no objection to any member of the staff accompanying her to satisfy themselves on this point. This distressing frankness had provoked a murmur of protests and reassurance, but Mrs. Bostock had announced abruptly that she would like to fetch a book from the medical library and the two women had left the room and returned together. Cully had been seen early, having established his right to be classed as a patient, and had been released to cosset his stomach ache at home. The only remaining patient, Mrs. King, had been interviewed and allowed to depart with her husband in attendance. Mr. Burge had also left, protesting loudly at the interruption of his session and the trauma of the whole experience.
“Mind you, he’s enjoying himself, you can see that,” confided Mrs. Shorthouse to the assembled staff. “The superintendent had a job getting rid of him, I can tell you.”
There was a great deal which Mrs. Shorthouse seemed able to tell them. She had been given permission to make coffee and prepare sandwiches in her small ground-floor kitchen at the rear of the building, and this gave her an excuse for frequent trips up and down the hall. The sandwiches were brought in almost singly. Cups were taken individually to be washed. This coming and going gave her an opportunity of reporting the latest situation to the rest of the staff who awaited each instalment with an anxiety and eagerness which they could only imperfectly conceal. Mrs. Shorthouse was not the emissary they would have chosen but any news, however obtained and by whomever delivered, helped to lighten the weight of suspense and she was certainly unexpectedly knowledgeable about police procedure.
“There’s several of them searching the building now and they’ve got their own chap on the door. They haven’t found anyone, of course. Well, it stands to reason! We know he couldn’t have got out of the building. Or in, for that matter. I said to the sergeant: ‘This clinic has had all the cleaning from me that it’s getting today, so tell your chaps to mind where they plant their boots …’
“The police surgeon’s seen the body. The fingerprint man is still downstairs and they’re taking everyone’s prints. I’ve seen the photographer. He went through the hall with a tripod and a big case, white on top and black at the bottom …
“Here’s a funny thing now. They’re looking for prints in the basement lift. Measuring it up, too.”
Fredrica Saxon lifted her head, seemed about to say something, then went on with her work. The basement lift, which was about four feet square and operated by a rope pulley, had been used to transport food from the basement kitchen to the first-floor dining room when the clinic was a private house. It had never been taken out. Occasionally medical records from the basement record room were hoisted in it to the first and second-floor consulting rooms, but it was otherwise little used. No one commented on a possible reason why the police should test it for prints.
Mrs. Shorthouse departed with two cups to be washed. She was back within five minutes.
“Mr. Lauder’s in the general office phoning the chairman. Telling him about the murder, I suppose. This’ll give the HMC something to natter about and no mistake. Sister is going through the linen inventory with one of the police. Seems there’s a rubber apron from the art-therapy room missing. Oh, and another thing. They’re letting the boiler out. Want to rake it through, I suppose. Nice for us, I must say. This place’ll be bloody cold on Monday …
“The mortuary van’s arrived. That’s what they call it, the mortuary van. They don’t use an ambulance, you see. Not when the victim’s dead. You probably heard it arrive. I dare say if you draw the curtains back a bit, you’ll see her being took in.”
But no one cared to draw back the curtains and, as the soft, careful feet of the stretcher-bearers shuffled past the door, no one spoke. Fredrica Saxon laid down her pencil and bowed her head as if she were praying. When the front door closed, their relief was heard in the soft hiss of breath released. There was a brief silence and then the van drove off. Mrs. Shorthouse was the only one to speak.
“Poor little blighter! Mind you, I only gave her another six months here, what with one thing and another, but I never thought she’d leave feet first.”
Jennifer Priddy sat apart from the rest of the staff on the edge of the treatment couch. Her interview with the superintendent had been unexpectedly easy. She didn’t know quite what she had expected but certainly it wasn’t this quiet, gentle, deep-voiced man. He hadn’t bothered to commiserate with her on the shock of finding the body. He hadn’t smiled at her. He hadn’t been paternal or understanding. He gave the impression that he was interested only in finding out the truth as quickly as possible and that he expected everyone else to feel the same. She thought that it would be difficult to tell him a lie and she hadn’t tried. It had all been quite easy to remember, quite straightforward. The superintendent had questioned her closely about the ten minutes or so she had spent in the basement with Peter. That was only to be expected. Naturally he was wondering whether Peter could have killed Miss Bolam after he returned from the post and before she joined him. Well, it wasn’t possible. She had followed him downstairs almost immediately and Mrs. Shorthouse could confirm it. Probably it hadn’t taken long to kill Enid—she tried not to think about that sudden, savage, calculated violence—but however quickly it was done, Peter hadn’t had time.